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Government Information Awareness
gbjbaanb writes "Wired News is reporting about the GIA, software inspired by the TIA program. 'Researchers at the MIT Media Lab unveiled the Government Information Awareness, or GIA, website Friday. Using applications developed at the Media Lab, GIA collects and collates information about government programs, plans and politicians from the general public and numerous online sources. Currently the database contains information on more than 3,000 public figures. The premise of GIA is that if the government has a right to know personal details about citizens, then citizens have a right to similar information about the government.'"
I like the premise, but this is a very superficial first effort. The site is slow, and you can get just about all of the same information at www.firstgov.gov. Knowing several public officials, I tried to use the site to see just what dirt I could dig up. I have to say I was pretty disappointed. I couldn't even get an official bio on all but the most prominent elected officials.
If TIA does nothing more than this, then we have very little to worry about.
exactly. http://www.usflag.org/us.code36.html#176. Although I'm sure you knew that.
Stupid people make stupid things profitable.
taken from this page: http://opengov.media.mit.edu/GIA/data.jsp
If you look at the flowchart they have, it actually takes quite a bit of effort to get information onto the system, as two of the possible four results of the system lead to the information being discarded. Check out the flowchart, and read the page - It covers a lot of important stuff.
they renamed it when some members of congress asked if spying on citisens might create a few problems. so, the name was changed to terrorist information awareness, and all was dandy again
story about it